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Saturday, March 3, 2012

Devils captain Zach Parise admitted he was “a little shaken up” initially, but said he was feeling fine after tonight’s 5-0 win in Washington despite being hit in the right side of his jaw by Brooks Laich’s stick.

Parise said went through the league’s concussion procedural testing before he came back out to the bench for the third period.

“We did the normal NHL protocol thing and their doctor said everything was fine,” he said.

Parise was sandwiched between Laich and Matt Hendricks just outside the Devils' blue line 9:40 into the second period. Laich got his stick up and made contact with th right side of Parise's jaw in a collision that Parise and Devils coach Pete DeBoer both thought was unintentional.

“I thought it was an accident." DeBeor said. "I know Brooks Laich and he’s not a dirty player. So, I’m sure it was accidental.”

“I saw the replay and he didn’t see me coming and kind of last minute he put his hands up to protect himself and got me right in the face,” Parise said. “He just apologized to me after. It wasn’t intentional. It was just an accident.”

Parise said Laich, "just said, ‘Sorry, I would never do something like that.’ I told him I didn’t think it was intentional. I knew it wasn’t intentional, but it was nice of him to apologize for it. I told him it was no problem. I wasn’t mad at him for doing it or anything. But it was a nice gesture.”

Parise remained down for a while before getting up slowly and exiting to the Devils’ locker room for the remainder of the second period.

“I was a little shaken up at first,” Parise said. “Then, after a little while it went away.”

There was understandable concern from DeBoer and Parise's teammates when he left the game.

“It worries everybody,” Dainius Zubrus said. “He’s our captain. He’s our leader. He’s a huge part of the team. We all know that when he goes down and stays down, there’s no pretending that’s for sure. We were all worried, but then we were happy that he was back. He didn’t play too much in the third, but just to have him back smiling on the bench was a relief to all of us.”

Parise has a some swelling and a red line along the right side of his jaw up to his ear from Laich’s stick and a little pain on that side of his mouth. He “surprisingly” kept all of his teeth, though.

“It doesn’t look normal, I don’t think,” Parise said of the right side of his face. “It hurts to open my mouth a little bit.”

Parise said he would have played more in the third period if the game had been closer.

He played just one power play shift as the team tried to get him a fourth goal after he had already notched his second career hat trick.

“It was just precautionary," DeBoer said. "He could have played. If the game had been closer he would have played. It wasn’t necessary. We’ve got busy schedule. We play again in a day and a half here in Long Island. So, we just got some other guys some ice.”

“I didn’t plan on playing at all in the third,” Parise said. “We talked about it before that it was a 5-0 game and they said there was no reason to put me back out there. We had the power play and they wanted to try to get me the fourth one, so no luck.”

Parise still ended up three big goals for the Devils in what was a big win for them after they had lost four in a row. With Ottawa losing to Chicago tonight, the Devils moved one point ahead of the Senators into sixth place in the East. They are tied in points with fifth-place Philadelphia with 77, but the Devils have played one more game.

Most importantly, they are now eight points up on the ninth-place Capitals.

“Mentally it was good,” Parise said of the victory. “It gets frustrating when you’re playing well and you don’t get the results you think you should get or you think you deserve. We made mistakes in Boston that cost us the game, but for us to snap out of it and get a good result in a hard building, that’s good. Now, we’ve got some tough games coming up and it’s nice to get back in the win column now.”

Parise probably had his most significant game as captain tonight, coming through with the hat trick at a time when they really needed a win to stop the bleeding.

“We’ve got a good leadership group here and obviously he’s the heartbeat of that,” DeBoer said. “Despite the fact that the wins hadn’t been coming, I think we all realized that we were real close and we just had to stick with it and that’s what we did tonight.”

***Parise said he told David Clarkson after his no-look pass on his first goal, “I wasn’t ready for it.”

“We’ve talked about doing that play,” Parise said. “We’ve tried it in practice, but I wasn’t expecting it. It was an awesome pass.”

Parise also wasn’t expecting his shot to go in on that goal.

“I was surprised that one went in really because I felt like I was on or below the goal line," Parise said. "I don’t know if it hit off of him or what, but I was really surprised that one went in.”

***Parise on his hat trick: “They’re always nice. Like I said when Kovy got one (in Buffalo on Feb. 14), they don’t come around often and I found myself in some good positions tonight. I got some good passes. I got some great passes. It was just one of those nights when it went in and it feels really good.”

About

TOM GULITTI has covered the New Jersey Devils for The Record since 2002. Prior to that, he covered the New York Rangers for four years. Gulitti joined The Record in 1998 after six years at The North Jersey Herald News. He graduated from Binghamton University in 1991 with a Bachelor of Arts in Rhetoric-Literature.